Twenty years ago this week, Wayne Gretzky was traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings. The trade caused a noticeable seismic shift in the focal point of the League’s attention from our brothers and sisters in the Great White North and the more traditional hockey markets in the Northern United States and ushered in the NHL’s “Sun Belt” expansion.

Whether you choose to agree or disagree that the NHL’s expansion to the South has been good or bad for the overall health of the sport, and there are compelling arguments for both sides, one has to admit that the move to non-traditional markets has been a source of some of the League’s current problems (which I will not get into here – I’ll leave that to the experts – and for a look back at media reactions at the time of the trade, check out this article on sportsnet).